


karavella

by orphan_account



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Male Character, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 09:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deimos' first memory is bitter, because boys must learn hard lessons on the knees of their mothers too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	karavella

One of Deimos' earliest memories involves him is sitting on the cold, hard, unforgiving steel grid of his mother's kitchen floor watching her open a cryotube. 

"In times gone by, we used to travel in these! My mother's mother traveled in this." His mother used to say every now and then as she waved the tubes around. Each carried fruits and grains and other produce from green house growers to the market, preserved and protected during space travel. 

Deimos sat on the ground and watched his mother sharpen knives as she waited for produce to defrost. He used to sit and watch his mother do so many fascinating things. 

She liked to narrate for him. Her voice was raspy, deep, and soothing to his ears. When she spoke, she squished the words, changed their shape, made them her own. She spoke Standard just like everyone else on the colony, but Deimos loved the way she sounded nothing like the EduVids. 

"This is bitter melon." 

Her knife was a silver swallow, darting through the air and slicing away at green flesh, white seeds flying neatly into the small sink. 

"You have to taste the bitterness of defeat, so that you can truly begin to appreciate the sweetness of victory," hist mother said as she spooned green mash into his mouth. Deimos tried to squirm away, mouth puckered in an unsatisfied pout. He made grabby hands for the small jar of dried fruit and sugared goods barely a foot away on their small kitchen counter, but his mother was an unrelenting force.

"Defeat is a taste you must get used to, baby boy," She said, making air ship noises as she brought the second spoonful to his mouth. "We are only human. We fail so often, and that in itself is a kind of defeat." 

He only appreciates her hard lessons later, when he is sitting in a metal bunker surrounded by the other men. He sits in their midst and feels like a phony, but when he throws back his very first cup of space-brewed spirit he does not flinch. An existence full of hate, prejudice, and war is what he has to looked forward to. He sees it in the stars, in the wide scattered wrinkles turning his mother's smooth cheeks into ragged leather. 

When he becomes a Fighter, he is expressionless as he is knocked down time and time again in fighting simulations (by his own Navigator). By Love (and traitorous, dangerous Cain).

Defeat is a bitter taste in the mouth, but Deimos is used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many theories about what life in space as a gypsy must have been like. Deimos' whole existence just makes me want to just give him a hug. And, yes, Star Trek.


End file.
